


Resurrection

by MildredMost



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aristocracy, Class Differences, Grave Robbers, M/M, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 08:32:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15457371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MildredMost/pseuds/MildredMost
Summary: He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. Something fell out of it and skittered across the floor.“You…” Edward hesitated to ask. “You make a habit of carrying teeth in your pocket?”John glanced down at the tooth lying there.“Worth a shilling, that,” he said. “Always got a couple about my person in case of need.”Edward swallowed. John grinned and kissed him. Edward wondered how he could want a man who carried human teeth in his pocket like loose change.





	Resurrection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exchequered (kesterstjohn)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kesterstjohn/gifts).



London, April 1832

“...Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust: in sure and certain hope of the _resurrection_ …” the vicar intoned, scattering a handful of earth onto cousin Emily’s coffin.

Edward’s Aunt gave a small wail and clutched a black lace handkerchief to her face. Edward shivered in the chilly spring air and remembered the last funeral he had attended, a year ago.

Then his grief had almost suffocated him, the weight of it crushing his lungs as though he were the one under six feet of earth and not his dear Francis. Hidden three rows back from the family who hadn’t loved Francis, or cared when he’d sickened and even less when he’d died, Edward had taken great shuddering breaths, the freezing air tearing at his chest the way the consumption had torn at Francis’s in his final weeks.

He’d wanted to push through the mourners and fall to his knees at the graveside. He wanted to lay a hand on the coffin to let Francis know he was there. They had always been there for each other, every moment, ever since school. Not to be there now, at the very end, was a torment.

Edward sucked in a harsh breath at the memory and glanced skywards.

“...Lord Jesus Christ,” the Vicar continued. “Who will transform our frail bodies…”

Edward noticed a young man standing under a weeping willow looking down at a fresh grave, his head bowed demurely. And yet something about him - the brightness of his eyes, or the curve of his full lips perhaps - was very far from demure. The man looked up and caught his eye, and Edward tore his eyes away.

Good God, but now was not the time, he thought. The sky above the cemetery had darkened, threatening a burst of spring rain.

Edward’s eyes had strayed again. The man had turned slightly and was bending down to look more closely at the gravestone. The fabric of his trousers pulled tightly across well muscled legs, and his coat fit snugly at his broad shoulders and narrow waist.

“...that they may be conformed to his _glorious_ body…”

 _Glorious about covered it_ , Edward thought, before forcibly turning himself away. He’d been reckless enough over the last year of grieving, taking comfort where it was offered whether free of charge or not, and barely caring if he was caught. But picking up rough trade at his cousin’s funeral was possibly pushing it.

“...For ever, and ever, Amen.”

“Amen,” Edward repeated. He bent his head. Rain began to patter down onto the coffin lid and the brim of Edward’s hat, and the family began to disperse.

Edward lingered. So did the man, several graves away.

“Are you quite alright, Lord Pelham?” a distant relative asked.

“I would just like to be alone for a little,” Edward said, covering his eyes with a gloved hand. People nodded in approval; young Lord Pelham actually showing a respectable emotion. He had obviously looked devastated enough to offend at Francis’s funeral, for Francis's eldest brother had knocked against Edward as he was leaving, hissing _sodomite_ in his ear.

“Poor Emily,” his deaf old Aunt Amelia was bellowing. “To be born deformed, then die so young.”

Edward went down on one knee on the damp grass, and pretended to be adjusting a wreath, waiting for his damned family to leave.

He felt rather than saw the man approach.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” the man said, taking off his hat and standing in front of him.

“Thank you,” said Edward. The man’s accent wasn’t quite placeable; not Edward’s own clipped upper class accent, but not unrefined either. And he was something to look at up close, with dark hair cropped close at the back and artfully untidy at the front, and warm brown eyes which looked intently at him. He wore a peacock blue waistcoat which was both unfitting for a funeral, and extremely attractive.

“Terrible thing,” Edward said, looking up at him. He knew how well he looked from that angle (Francis had told him often enough) and he knew the effect of his blue eyes looking up slowly through his dark lashes. The man’s full lips parted, and he bit down on his lip.

“So young,” he said. “And beautiful. Your sister.”

“Cousin. She had a beautiful soul,” Edward lied.

“Forgive me, but I couldn't help overhearing - she was afflicted with a deformity?” The man said it lightly as though from idle curiosity.

“Sadly she was born with a curve in her spine.”

“Like a hump, perhaps?” the man said.

“Um. Yes I suppose so,” Edward said. He hadn’t ever paid too much attention to it. One shoulder had been higher than the other perhaps, but her mother had dressed her in so many ruffles he hadn’t particularly noticed.

“Medical curiosity that,” the man said, and tapped his full lips thoughtfully with a finger. “Terrible thing. Is it long since she passed?”

“Monday,” Edward said, getting up and brushing damp earth from his knee.

“Two days then,” the man said. “Indeed. And she died of…?”

“Cholera,” Edward admitted, though that was supposed to be a secret. Only the lower classes succumbed to that disease, but Emily had picked it up somewhere, the young idiot. Probably sneaking around with her ladies’ maid, as she had been wont to do.

He felt confused. He’d been in hope of a liaison at the back of one of the more ostentatious tombs, not a strange conversation about Emily’s various medical conditions.

“Look,” he began.

“What would you like me to look at?” the man said, raising his eyes slowly to Edward’s and devastating him with a slow smile. Edward swallowed.

His eyes were lit with wicked promise and his hair looked soft and touchable, and Edward wanted to wrap his hand in it and tug till he cried out. And there was something wanton about the man that made him look as though he’d enjoy it.

“Perhaps you could show me whatever it is somewhere out of this cold wind,” the man suggested. “The Grayson’s vault here has been left unlocked.”

“Careless,” Edward said. The Grayson vault loomed above them, a weeping angel drooping across it. He looked around quickly before stepping inside.

“Indeed,” the man said, stepping in after him. Edward took a quick breath of earthy, dank air before finding himself pulled tightly against the man’s body.

“Aren’t you handsome,” the man said as he pressed his mouth to Edward’s throat.

Xxx

“I’m John,” the man said breathlessly, and let Edward shove him roughly against the cold stone and rut against him. ‘Let’ him, because Edward could feel the hard, compact muscle of his chest, and sensed the wiry strength in his arms, but it seemed he preferred to submit to rough treatment. Edward tangled his fingers experimentally in John’s hair and John moaned with pleasure. Edward pulled hard, yanking his head back, and John swore colourfully and arched against him. Edward couldn’t believe his luck.

But then John slowed things for a moment, pulling away and putting a hand lightly at Edward’s waist and the other against his face. They looked at each other in the half-light, the smell of damp and mould surrounding them.

“I don’t kiss,” Edward said shortly. He hadn’t, ever. No one but Francis.

“You’ll kiss me,” John said, lowering his gaze to Edward’s lips. Edward felt weak with desire. He wanted desperately to feel the man’s mouth on him, and a year of holding himself back, holding himself _together_ with anonymous, frantic encounters felt like too much suddenly. All this death. Why not let himself feel?

He jumped as John swept a warm hand up under Edward’s shirt, the touch of warmth on bare skin almost overwhelming. His mouth opened in a silent gasp at the sensation and John leant forward and pressed his own to Edward’s.

There was a moment of stillness; Edward felt frozen momentarily at this intimacy. And then he felt the flicker of John’s tongue against his own, and things became frantic again. John’s hands scrabbled at their clothing, releasing them both, and they each wrapped a hand around the other’s cock. And then John was stroking him in hard, long pulls and Edward was kissing him and biting at him, winding fingers of his other hand in John’s hair. John finished first, his head tugged back by Edward, utterly abandoned. Edward followed with a cry, shooting over John’s waistcoat in his excitement.

“I do apologise. I shall have it cleaned for you of course,” Edward said as soon as he’d had his breath back. He pulled a black-edged handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at them both. John only smiled at him, his perfect lips flushed red, and quick fingers fastening them both back up.

“Not to worry, it’s only a waistcoat. I on the other hand decorated Lady Grayson.”

Edward glanced down. They had been standing in a small pile of bones.

“She’s long past minding,” John said.

“Good God,” Edward said, horrified.

“Sun’s going down,” John said suddenly. “And I have work to get to. That was…” he interrupted himself to give Edward a lingering, filthy kiss, “...quite spectacular. But I must go.”

“Wait,” Edward grasped at John’s wrist, surprising himself. Usually he was more than happy to say goodbye after such a liason, but this had been...something. More. “Your direction at least, so I can compensate you for your waistcoat.”

“I have no fixed direction at the present time. Would you give me yours?” John said. Edward hesitated. Far too risky to admit his name and address - opening himself to blackmail.

“Thought not,” John said, with a flash of that wicked smile.

And it would be madness to meet again of course, however much he found himself longing to.

How much of this showed in his face Edward couldn’t tell, but John lifted a hand to his cheek in an unexpectedly gentle gesture.

“I shall find you again,” he said.

John left first and Edward watched him go in what was left of the light on that short spring day. He had headed towards one of the more notorious rookeries near Holburn, Edward noticed. He wondered what his work might be.

xxxx

Edward fidgeted with boredom in his seat in the Lords.

It was this interminable Reform Bill. By Christ it had been voted down by the House already, and now here it was again for a third time and Edward wanted to scream.

He only took his seat in the Lords to cause irritation. After Francis had died he’d wanted to lash out at all of them, all these disgusting hypocrites who had despised Francis for what he was, and condemned them for what they did together. Even as they themselves whored and cheated and squatted like toads on vast estates, wringing extortionate rents out of their impoverished tenants. And they sat here, stupid, drunk and ignorant, and decided the laws of the land. Decided how men should live. Decided what was unnatural. They should have no right to do so at all.

They had of course thought Francis unnatural. He’d been hopelessly effeminate. Effete and charming and outrageously beautiful, and no more able to hide his true nature than a bird of paradise could disguise itself as a sparrow. Edward hadn’t been able to resist him for a moment, nor Francis him. It had been as natural to them as breathing.

Until Francis had no breath left. Edward had held Francis as he cried with fright after the diagnosis, and held him tighter as he coughed, his whole body wracked with pain. He had bathed his forehead and wiped blood from his mouth, and prayed and fucking prayed for more time. _Not forever_ , Edward had bargained with a god he wasn’t sure existed, _just a little more. We are so young. Let me have him for just a little longer_.

But the disease had consumed him so quickly. That last awful night when there was nothing left of Francis but pain and laudanum, Edward had laid down beside him so he wouldn’t be alone. He had stroked his soft brown hair shot through with gold, and kissed his sweet face, and whispered their memories to him for hours, until at last his breathing became harsher, and drew out, and then stopped, and he was gone.

But Edward could not show his grief to the world at all, it was too precious to be exposed. And he didn’t, not even when he overheard someone say that Francis dying had been for the best. _Because of his nature, you know._

And so he sat. And listened to the fools he’d gone to Eton and Cambridge with extemporise on why the working man was not suitable to be awarded a vote. Edward had already decided to vote the damn Bill through, if they ever got around to a vote in this lifetime. Not from any Radical inclination but specifically because one of the men he hated most in the world - Francis’s eldest brother -  was Member for the rottenest of rotten boroughs. How he’d love the man's seat in the Commons ripped from him.

He became aware of someone at his elbow, handing him a note.

Scanning it quickly, he stood and nodded his apologies to the other Lords on his bench.

His Aunt was failing.

Xxxx

Cholera took her quickly, the emaciated old bird that she was. She was the last of his close family and Edward was left with the vast townhouse near Hyde Park and an even vaster fortune than before.

He was expected, it seemed, to plan a lavish funeral. He did this to the best of his ability, and since his cousin’s had only been the week before, it had seemed straightforward.

Until the funeral director came to the house in an agitated state.

“There is a problem,” the funeral director told him. “Your cousin is missing.”

“Which cousin?” Edward said distractedly.

“Ah...the young lady we laid to rest last week,” said the funeral director.

Edward blinked. “I...don’t…”

“Resurrectionists, sir,” the Funeral director burst out. “I have never in all my career seen such a plague of resurrectionists as we now have. The medical schools should be shut down, the way they…”

“She’s been taken?” Edward said, still reeling. “Stolen?”

“When we opened the grave in preparation for Lady Pelham we made the discovery,” the man said.

Edward was wordless. It was not illegal, this terrible practice of body-snatching. There was nothing, in effect he could do.

“But why Emily? Of all people,” he said hopelessly.

“They steal to order, these men,” the Funeral Director said. “A doctor who particularly wanted a young lady perhaps? It is best not to dwell on why.”

“Yes,” Edward said. “Yes, you’re quite right.”

But his thoughts strayed back to his encounter after Emily’s funeral. “Medical curiosity that,” John had said.

_Oh God._

“Do you wish to go ahead Lord Pelham?” the funeral director was asking.

“Yes, of course,” Edward said, waving his hand.

Xxxx

Edward told no one of the awful theft of Emily. They merely lowered his Aunt’s casket down next to Emily’s empty one, and no one had to know a thing.

John appeared just as the mourners dispersed. Against his will, Edward felt a shudder of lust as he remembered their last meeting.

“Another loss, so soon,” John said, his voice all sympathy.

“Indeed,” Edward said.

“And your aunt. Did she also suffer from the family...affliction?” John said.

“Do you mean her spine?” Edward snapped.

John inclined his head. “I only ask out of medical curiosity, if such a thing runs in families. I hope to study medicine one day and help people afflicted with such disfigurements.”

Edward stared at him. John stood with his head slightly bowed and his hands clasped, his gentle tone and expression the very image of respectability. If only Edward hadn’t known what the man looked like when he was held against the wall of a vault and tugged roughly to completion, he might just have believed him.

But he knew. And he knew the man was dissembling now.

“Liar,” Edward said.

“Me?” John said, as though horror-struck, his eyes very wide.

“You…” Edward forced himself to lower his voice. “You took her didn’t you? My cousin? You are...that interest in her spine, the ‘medical curiosity’. Who paid you?” He spat that last, and John lost his innocent expression.

“You are maddened by grief sir,” he said in a hard voice. “And in any case you have no proof.”

“How much did you get for her? Where is she - Guy’s Hospital? They love medical marvels there. Oh God, have you no feeling?” Edward grasped him by the wrist.

“If you don’t stop this I shall have to call a policeman,” John said. “I believe you have run quite mad.”

“Fetch one then!” Edward snarled. “And let’s see what he has to say.”

“He’ll say ‘what are you two doing, lurking around a graveyard’, that’s what he’ll say,” John said, a ghost of a smile on his face.

“And I’ll say I’m grieving for my cousin,” Edward said, but his voice was unsure. Perhaps that story would be more believable if they were both gentlemen and one of them didn’t look quite so much like the more expensive sort of rough trade.

“And he’ll think you were looking to get your prick sucked.”

Edward tried to think of a retort but his mind had gone blank at the mention of things being sucked.

“Like the thought of that, don’t you?” John said, getting closer to him. Edward didn’t speak. He stared at John for a moment, and John looked back, looked him up and down like a hungry dog. Edward nodded.

John grabbed his arm and crushed him into the space behind the nearest gravestone and the wall. Edward barely registered the smell of crushed ivy and damp earth, and the feel of miserable  wet stone soaking through the back of his coat, so aware was he of the other man’s body against him.

“ _Please_ …” Edward said hoarsely.

“Oh yes, I will. But you’ll kiss me first, my Lord,” John said.

Edward moaned his assent as John crushed his mouth to his. He felt heavy with lust; drunk with the feel of this awful man against him, his frighteningly strong arms holding him against the headstone. He opened his mouth against John’s aware that he was making small whimpering sounds. Fuck. _You’re such a desperate little tart, aren’t you_ , Francis used to tease when Edward got overwhelmed like this. _God, I’ll spill just listening to you_.

Good God, not that now. _Not now_.

“How much did you sell her for, you shit,” he said. He was rewarded with a roll of John’s hips against his own which almost finished him.

“Twelve pounds I got for her,” John said panting, their still-clothed cocks pushing against each other. “From Dr Astley Cooper.”

“Monster,” Edward whispered as John ripped open his trousers and felt for his iron hard cock. Good Christ, what was wrong with him. He groaned as John dropped to his knees.

“You want me because I’m a bad man,” John said, his voice teasing. He freed Edward’s prick from his clothing and wrapped his fist around it, beginning to stroke. Edward gave a strangled moan, watching John helplessly.

“You’ve probably never met a worse,” John said. He’d released Edward again, leaving his prick hard and flushed dark, bobbing against his stomach.

“Absolutely untrue. I sit in the House of Lords,” Edward said.

“Well, there’s competition alright,” John said lightly, and resting his hands on Edward’s thighs, he swallowed Edward to the root. Edward arched up, and was slammed back against the cold stone in reward. John looked up at him, his full lips obscene around Edward’s cock.

“Touch yourself,” Edward managed, and John began to, even as he slowly drew his mouth up and almost off Edward over and over, driving him to distraction.

Edward was writhing within moments. “Faster, please, damn you,” he gasped, hands in John’s hair. John didn’t change his pace at all, but sucked harder and took him deeper instead.

Edward bucked up and John didn’t stop him this time, just moaned at the tug of Edward’s hands in his hair. Edward pushed in again and again, feeling his balls draw up tight and his orgasm build, his thighs starting to shake. How could he be doing this, barely concealed, and in daylight? But then John moaned long around his prick and pulled back a little, Edward could see him spilling onto the ground by his feet, and that was all he could take. His orgasm took him, and he cried out and spent hard, half inside John’s mouth.

John sat back, licking his lips. Edward handed him a handkerchief.

“I…” he faltered. “I do hope I didn’t hurt you.”

“You didn’t. I do hope you aren’t too upset about your cousin,” John said.

Edward in that moment couldn’t care less. “I’m not. But don’t take my aunt at least, for god’s sake,” Edward said.

John sighed as he got to his feet. “I am trying to build a business here you know. Toffs instead of the poor, that’s my specialty. Anyone can go to Bunhill Fields and dig up some paupers’ grave; ten a night you can get there sometimes. But they’re not quality.”

“My God,” Edward said. John brushed his hair out of his earnest brown eyes. Funny how innocent he looked when the most despicable things came out of his mouth.

“I’d much rather be in the business of inheriting large fortunes, such as yourself,” John said. “But needs must, as they say.”

“When the devil drives,” Edward said, beginning to smile.

“I believe he does,” John said.

“Very likely.” Edward made some attempts with the handkerchief to clean himself up then gave it up as a bad job. “Don’t disappear again,” Edward said. John’s brown eyes widened a little in surprise.

“Alright,” he said. “I am quite taken with you, as it happens.”

Edward felt absurdly flattered.

“I’m often alone. _Always_ alone,” Edward corrected himself. He pressed his card into John’s hand. “Visit me.”

John gave him a long look. “I’m sorry you’re alone,” he said. “I suppose the fellow who taught you to kiss like that has gone.”

Edward almost laughed at this prim description. “Died. Horribly. In my arms.”

John nodded. He tucked Edward’s card into his glove. “Don’t suppose he taught you to fuck as well as kiss, did he?” he said.

An irrepressible laugh escaped Edward. “As a matter of fact he _did_.”

“Good to know you’re not just a pretty face,” John said. He brushed his lips against Edward’s cheek for a moment, then, with that particular trick he had, vanished into the dark.

Xxx

 

It was 3 o’clock in the morning four days later, when Edward became aware that someone was throwing stones at his window.

He’d been drinking on and off for a while, as was his tendancy these days. He’d sleep most of the day, having nothing in particular to do, and then the nights would stretch out in front of him, impossible to fill. Edward tried to fill them with claret.

Throwing up the sash he leaned out.

“What do you want at this hour?” he said archly to the man below.

“I tried to use your tradesman’s entrance, as the actress said to the bishop. But there wasn’t any answer,” John said, winking at him.

“Do be quiet,” Edward said, trying not to smile and failing.

“Feed me then,” John said. “That’ll stop my mouth.”

“Very well,” Edward said, reflecting that that wasn’t the only way he planned to stop John’s mouth.

 

xxx

 

Edward watched as John devoured the cold chicken. They were sitting by a low fire in his private sitting room, Edward wrapped in a flamboyant dressing gown and John looking strangely neat and scrubbed in his peacock blue waistcoat.

“I don’t know how you can, after what you’ve just been doing,” he burst out after a moment.

John glanced down at the greasy bone in his hand.

“Well I’ve not much to do with bones. The point is to get them out of the ground before there’s bones involved,” he said. Edward closed his eyes briefly at the thought.

“To have an appetite at all….” he began.

“You ever dug a grave have you?” John said, a teasing smile on his face. “I thought not. Those soft hands of yours, like getting my prick stroked by a lady.” He stopped to enjoy Edward’s outraged expression. “Well it’s hungry work. Six foot down you’ve to dig. Least if it’s someone rich.”

“And where is the...product now? Sold on already?” Edward asked.

“Well I left it just near your area railings. Hope you don’t mind. I was dreadfully hungry you see.”

“Are you telling me that you’ve left a...a corpse outside my house?” Edward stuttered with horror.

“I’m only in jest,” John said. He reached out and patted Edward’s hand. “I didn’t work tonight.”

So he’d washed and dressed in anticipation of seeing Edward, not to wash the stench of the grave off himself. Edward felt strangely pleased by this.

“I must ask…”

“How I got into the business?” John sat back, the angular planes of his face picked out by the firelight. He looked down for a moment and Edward admired the sweep of his lashes. He really was rather beautiful. Edward knew he was handsome himself - all aristocratic bone structure, fierce blue eyes and straight, dark brows, but he did have a tendency to look severe. Or as Francis had put it, _darling, you know how beautiful I think you, but you do often look as though you’re about to ask what the revolting smell is._

But John, somehow, looked sweet.

“Well,” he began. He told Edward a dreadful story of impoverished parents who ended in debtors prison; how no mercy was shown them; how John himself went from a loving home to destitution; how he tried over and again to get honest work, but was foiled every time, or sacked through no fault of his own, or forced to steal. And then he was sent to the treadmill for a month for vagrancy, and on his release vowed never to bother with his conscience again.

“I tried to be a good man, to obey the law and have fellow feeling for others,” he finished earnestly. “But I believe my soul turned to blackness beneath my feet on that treadmill.”

They looked at each other for a moment.

“So how much of all that was true?” Edward asked.

John’s face hitched into a sly smile that made Edward’s insides churn with lust.

“Some,” he said. “You like a sob story, you toffs.”

“Not me,” Edward said.

“No, not you. You don’t even pretend to care,” John said, and he glanced at Edward with open admiration.

It was true, he never really had cared for other people, though no one had ever put it to him before. Another thing he and Francis had been alike in. They’d been arrogant and untouchable and perfectly matched. He and Francis had never bothered to talk of love to each other.

 _I hate everyone besides you,_ Francis used to say. _And I hate everyone besides you,_ Edward would reply.

“So don’t you pretend either,” Edward said.

“Most was true,” John said, shrugging. “Mine isn’t an unusual tale. But I never intended to take honest work, not when I saw what it did to my father and mother. What could I do? I can’t read and write. Pure collecting? Street sweeping? Fuck that, if you’ll excuse me.”

Fuck that indeed. Edward couldn’t really muster a strenuous protest.

“So why have you no fellow feeling for mankind?” asked John with another of his lopsided grins.

Edward had no real answer. His nature, he supposed, and his neverending outrage at the way Francis had been treated by people, and his anger that the two of them could never just _be_.

“People are generally unpleasant,” he said.

“Except for your fellow,” John said gently.  
  
Edward nodded, feeling his face convulse with emotion suddenly. For God’s sake, would he never learn to contain himself?

John moved over to him and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. Something fell out of it and skittered across the floor.

“You…” Edward hesitated to ask. “You make a habit of carrying teeth in your pocket?”

John glanced down at the tooth lying there.

“Worth a shilling, that,” he said. “Always got a couple about my person in case of need.”

Edward swallowed, tears forgotten. John grinned and kissed him. Edward wondered how he could want a man who carried human teeth in his pocket like loose change.

“It’s not...from…” Edward began.

“Lord no,” John said, sliding to his knees between Edward’s legs. He made short work of the dressing gown, laying Edward bare before him. John stroked him a couple of times and Edward heard himself let out a whimper. “Her teeth were bloody awful. No offense.”

“None taken,” Edward said, watching as John undressed. “How did you come about them?”

John looked up at him. “You really want to know?”

“Tell me while I fuck you,” Edward said hoarsely, getting between John’s legs. “Tell me exactly what you did.”

And John did. He whispered the awful things he did into Edward’s ear. How he’d take a hammer. How many blows were needed. What angle was best. How much force.

Edward had never been so hard in his life.

“You’re despicable,” he said, reaching for the oil which had rolled from the pocket of his dressing gown.

“I am,” John said, his eyes innocent, though his smile was anything but. He took the oil, and all the while his hands worked, coating Edward’s prick, pushing his own fingers inside himself in preparation. “But I try so hard to be good, sir. I don’t want to be a bad man.”

“Jesus Christ,” Edward moaned, the ‘sir’ going right to his cock. He felt as though he might spend there and then.

“Bit of rough you’ve picked up, aren’t I?” John shoved him backwards and straddled him. He bent to Edward’s ear. “I’ll show you fucking rough, sir,” he said, and reaching back, he slid the head of Edward’s cock into his oiled hole.

Edward let his head fall back with a moan. John was almost painfully tight, bearing down on him relentlessly. He trembled with the effort of not moving, scared he’d spend straight away. But then John began to move and said in a rough voice, “Don’t know how to fuck?” and Edward lost his restraint. Taking hold of John’s hips he fucked him hard, and John pushed back harder, his lean thighs straining as he slammed himself onto Edward’s cock.

John’s face had lost its teasing expression. With his eyes closed and that wide, full mouth panting and open, he looked angelic and debauched at the same time. Edward couldn’t last. He slammed his hips upwards frantically, the slap of skin on skin urging him onwards. John was lost, whimpering and moaning with the onslaught, his cock hard and wet and jerking with their movements. Edward wrapped his hand around it, pulling it in long, tight strokes which reduced John to a series of sobbing moans before he jerked upright and spent hard over Edward’s chest.

Edward could feel him clenching around his own cock and Christ if he could hold back any longer. He thrust in deep and slow a couple of times, sending the other man squirming with sensitivity, until John begged “Finish sir, I can’t take it.” Edward took mercy on him. With a final flurry of thrusts he finished deep in John’s arse with a shout.

John collapsed against him, kissing him again. Edward kissed back, licking at his throat and his collar bone and slowly they curled their bodies against each other and relaxed.

“You’re right. Your fellow did teach you well,” John said.

“Francis,” Edward said, and felt a strange stab of joy just at saying his name out loud. How that could be when he had another man’s spend cooling on his body, he didn’t know.

Francis would have loved John though. He’d have thought him macabre and terrible and insisted they share him.

“Francis. What was he like, then?”

And Edward began to tell him.

“I’d have like to have met your Francis,” John said after a while. “I’d have liked to have had you both, too.”

“He’d have liked that. Almost as much as I like you calling me sir in bed, like I’m fucking my footman.”

“Thought you’d like that. Might try ‘master’ next time, though you might fuck me through the floor if that was anything to go by.”

“You’re a manipulative shit,” Edward said, laughing.

John opened his eyes wide. “I don’t mean to be. I try so hard to be good,” he said, and Edward shivered with lust despite himself.

“Stop it,” he said.

John smiled and rolled over, kicking up his heels. He rested his head on his arms and sighed with happiness, looking up at Edward.

“How do you look so heavenly, when you’ve come directly from hell?” Edward wondered, leaning down for a kiss.

John groaned a little. “Such sweetness from Lord Misery. Makes it hard to leave. But I’ll have to go back out presently. I need some luck. I owe money round half of London.”

“Oh stay,” Edward said, who felt pleasantly sleepy, and was enjoying having John’s lithe, hard muscled body next to him. “How much do you need?”

“How much you giving?” John countered.

“I don’t want to treat you like a whore, John,” Edward said.

“You’re going to save me instead are you?” John teased.

“God, no. Who am I to save anyone from themselves?” Edward said.

“Why then?” John said.

“Because why not? I have more than I know what to do with, and there’s noone I wish to give any to. I hate everyone, you know.”

“Everyone besides me,” John said, with another of his wicked smiles.

“Everyone besides you,” Edward replied, feeling as though a ghost had just put a cold hand on his heart.

 

Xxx

 

Edward was just leaving the Lords after another interminable reading of the Reform Bill when he felt his shoulder nudged roughly from behind.

Whirling round to see who insulted him so, he was met by Sir Alan Mayberry. Or, as he knew him, Francis’s older brother.

“What do you want?” Edward said. Mayberry looked deathly - almost exactly the way Francis had at the end. Thin, pale with two spots of colour burning high on his cheeks, he swayed on his feet, supported by a cane.

“Are you unwell Mayberry?” Edward said.

“How do you mean to vote tomorrow?” Mayberry said, ignoring him.

“None of your fucking business,” Edward said, his voice icy.

“It is my business when my political career relies on it,” Mayberry said.

“Then I’ll vote for it,” Edward said. “For if anyone should be stopped from having any power it’s you. Francis told me all about you.”

“Oh Francis told tales of the school room I suppose,” Mayberry sneered. “If he hadn’t been so damned girlish he would have fought me back.”

“Hard to fight when you’ve had your fingers broken. And you were eighteen by then, I believe. He was only twelve.”

“Look here,” Mayberry began, then broke off to cough. He turned aside and coughed into a handkerchief, but Edward saw the blood anyway.

The man probably had about two weeks.

Mayberry stepped towards him again. “You shall vote against,” he snarled, and there was blood on his teeth, “You _shall_ do it. I have letters you know. Evidence you used to sodomise my brother.”

“Mostly the other way around, in actuality. Though either way was very enjoyable,” Edward said because firstly it was true, and secondly because the look on Mayberry’s face was worth it. And there were no such letters - as though either of them had been so stupid.

“I don’t see how that could be, when he was almost a woman,” Mayberry spat. “I told a doctor friend about the way he behaved once, he was curious to examine him. It was too late by then though - unless he sent the Resurrectionists to get him anyway. I wonder.”

“I would rather hang than vote for anything that benefits you,” Edward ground out. “And you’re dying, Mayberry. Any fool can see it.”

“Why don’t you fuck off and weep over Frannie’s empty grave,” Mayberry said, before succumbing to another coughing fit.

"I hope all eight of your constituents mourn you," Edward returned, but his heart thudded with fear.

xxx

It was 3 o’clock in the morning when Edward saw John emerge from the rookery with a wooden shovel in one hand and a darklight in the other. He could not have looked more obvious if he’d had a corpse thrown across his shoulders.

Edward, who had been waiting half the night to find him, banged down his carriage window.

“Get in,” he barked at John.

John looked up at Edward, and, swinging himself easily onto the carriage step, he slid into the carriage and onto the bench opposite.

“What’s to do, Lord Misery,” he said.

Edward was sodden with drink, and shivering with cold, and not in any state for teasing.

“I cannot sleep. I haven’t slept in a day and a night. They have taken Francis, I know they have.”

“Taken from where?”

“Highgate,” Edward said, his hands trembling. “He’s at Highgate. Or was.”

“No one takes from Highgate, too many guards,” John said.

“How can you be sure?” Edward could hear his voice rising, a hysterical note in it. “You can’t know!”

“I do know,” John said.

“Please…” Edward said, grabbing at John’s coat. John grasped him by his upper arms, steadying him.

“Calm yourself. What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Can you...can you find out,” Edward said, and tears thickened in his throat. “I need to know. Please John. I need to.”

John shook his head. “This isn’t right. And if _I’m_ saying that then you should be worried.”

“Then I’ll find out for myself,” Edward snarled. “If you of all people will not aid me.”

“You haven’t the least idea…”

“Give that to me,” Edward said, snatching the shovel. “I’ll do it!”

“No you bloody won’t,” John said firmly, taking the shovel back effortlessly from Edward. Christ he was strong when he wanted to be.

“This carriage is going to Highgate and you may come if you have the inclination,” Edward said, aware in his imperiousness that he was slurring his words.

“I think perhaps I must,” John said. “But come here.”

Edward moved to sit by John and found himself wrapped in his arms. He allowed himself to be held for the rest of the journey.

xxx

 

“You - go and sit over there,” John said, shoving Edward away and handing him a flask of gin at the same time. “Go on.” Edward swayed, shivering but didn’t move.

“Christ,” John said, and took Edward’s hand. He took him to a stone bench, shrugging off the coat he wore and wrapped it around Edward’s shoulders. “Sit there. Have a drink. Don’t watch.”

Edward watched John walk away into the darkness, and gulped at the gin in the flask. He pulled the coat tighter, his tears coming freely now. He was so... _drunk_. He strained to hear any sounds John was making, but John wasn’t wrong about the wooden shovel. Almost complete silence.

Edward must have dosed. He woke to John shaking his shoulder gently.

“Rise and shine Lord Pelham. We’re all finished here,” he said.

“Was...he…” Edward began.

“Yes, he was there. I told you,” John said.

“And what did he…” Edward didn’t really know what he was asking.

John just shook his head. “Nothing to see. Wrapped in the winding sheet. But there, I promise.”

Edward started to cry again. He was drunk and grief maddened, and sitting in a fucking graveyard drinking gin from a dead man’s flask, and wrapped in no doubt what was a dead man’s coat and he didn’t know what he was doing any more.

John crouched down beside him, and put his hand against Edward’s face, wiping a stray tear with his thumb.

“Don’t take on so. You should feel lucky. I don’t dig up just anyone’s dead lovers you know,” he said, and Edward gave a strangled hiccup. “You have to be rather special to qualify for this sort of treatment.”

Edward buried his face in his hands, half laughing, half crying.

“I have to finish filling back in. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t off making a nuisance of yourself,” John said, getting back to his feet.

“I’ll come,” said Edward. He stood, his head spinning. “I want to help.”

John shook his head and sighed. “Alright. But be quiet and do what you’re told.”

Edward’s guts roiled as they neared Francis’s grave, but there was nothing to see. John had done a tidy job, digging a neat, angled trench from the side and pulling away the end of the casket. He had already put the casket back together and Edward was glad.

He bent and took a handful of the damp earth. John stayed back.

Edward’s legs shook as he took the final steps. He crouched.

He placed the earth by the casket, touching the splintered wood for a moment.

“Ashes to ashes, Francis,” Edward whispered. “Dust to dust.”

It felt like goodbye - a true one at last. Something he’d kept wound tightly in a tangled snarl within him felt as though it unknotted in that moment.

He spoke again.

“I’m so so sorry I didn’t stand by you at the funeral. I should have. You would have, for me. But I have suffered an awful lot over it, so I hope that makes up for it.” He paused as he imagined Francis’s wry expression at this. “And I know if you’ve been watching me tonight, you’ve been laughing. But you always enjoyed me being hysterical, didn’t you. I think I’ve surpassed myself this time.”

He sat back on his heels, his fingers still pressed against the casket.

“Rest in peace, sweet boy. At least you can now I’ve stopped bothering you.”

He stood again.

After a few moments, John came forward with the shovel. “I’m afraid we must be quick now,” he said. “It’ll begin to get light any moment.”

But Edward felt that it had begun to get light already.

“Come home with me, won’t you?” he said to John.

“Yes please,” John said, and Edward buried his face against his neck with affection.

 

Xxxx

 

“I’m going to help you, John,” Edward said later, as they lay panting beside each other on his opulent bed.

“Help me how?” John said, propping himself up on his forearms.

“Rich corpses,” Edward said. “I will find ways we can steal them.”

John chuckled. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re rather frightening?”

“Not often enough,” Edward said. “But, I mean it. There are two men I can think of who will die any minute, and I can think of a dozen ways we can spirit them away without the slightest suspicion.”

“Are they Lords?”

“One is a knight. The other a baronet.”

“Interesting medical conditions?”

“Oh, lots.”

“What’s in it for you?”

“Revenge. Score settling. You with a happy smile.”

“Dear Edward,” John said, kissing him on the forehead. “I feel cherished.”

xxx

 

Edward left John in his rumpled bed the next day as he rushed to the Lords to take part in the vote.

The Bill was stopped. The Prime Minister resigned. There was an outcry at the gates of Parliament and a mob was dispersed with violence.

Edward, exhausted and no longer very interested, went straight back home and got into bed next to John again, who sleepily snuggled against him. They slept for hours, until evening.

Edward woke to find John leaning out of the window.

“That vote today has broken things up a little,” he said. “London’s up for a fight.”

“What’s happened?”

“What hasn’t,” he said, his wicked smile broadening. “It’s chaos out there. Can you smell it? No Prime Minister and a run on the Bank of England - toffs walking the streets with gold bars in their pockets and one to protect them. There’s a mob gathering to topple the Duke if he’s given the government. You Lords did a good day’s work for once.”

Edward could smell it. At least, he smelt fire. And he felt it too, a sense of fizzing excitement and agitation, and heat.

“I voted to pass the Bill,” he confessed.

“Well you’re full of surprises.” John said. “Anyhow, it’ll pass in the end. The people won’t stand for it. And while that’s all happening, there’s gold to be robbed and scores to be settled. There’ll be corpses made tonight. Come on, my lord. Let’s soak it up.”

“Very good,” Edward said, his blood firing at John’s words. He looked around for his clothes and suddenly there was John, pulling him back onto the bed and kissing him hard and wild. Edward grabbed at him and kissed back and they pushed and pulled at each other for a moment till John broke away, panting.

“Couldn’t help myself,” he said, his eyes still lit with that feverish excitement. “Come on, let me show you my London. It’s violent and filthy and fucking awful. You’ll love it there,” he said, kissing Edward again.

“Yes,” Edward said, half dazed and utterly contented. And he in turn would show John his; just as horrible in its own decadent way. "Let's go together."


End file.
